Antimicrobial and Antibacterial Agents

Infections caused by multidrug-resistant bacteria represent one of the biggest challenges in the medical field. There is an urgent need to develop new antibacterial targets and antibacterial agents to combat multidrugresistance bacteria. For several years, the main target has been focused on the peptidoglycan biosynthesis pathway which provides a potential route to design novel antibiotic compounds. In fact, most bacteria require either lysine, or its biosynthetic precursor, Diaminopimelate Acid (DAP), as a component of the peptidoglycan layer of the cell wall. Nevertheless, DAP/Lysine is not present in mammals, thus, inhibitors of this pathway could provide potential antibacterial agents displaying low mammalian toxicity. In order to fight antibacterial resistance, our work focused on the design and synthesis of new analogs of diaminopimelic acid and lysine.